The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures final report provides an overview of the evidence and discusses the challenges and choices for policy makers and others whose interests relate to all areas that interact with the food system.
Agricultural mechanization in developing countries has taken at least two contested innovation pathways—the “incumbent trajectory” that promotes industrial agriculture, and an “alternative pathway” that supports small-scale mechanization for sustainable development of hillside farming systems.
Small-scale farmers in the Brazilian Amazon collectively hold tenure over more than 12 million ha of permanent forest reserves, as required by the Forest Code. The trade-off between forest conservation and other land uses entails opportunity costs for them and for the country, which have not been sufficiently studied. We assessed the potential income generated by multiple use forest management for farmers and compared it to the income potentially derived from six other agricultural land uses.
Small millets, a group of highly nutritious food, have taken a back seat in the Indian agriculture landscape in recent years, due to government policies and failings in the value chain. In this commentary, the unusual decline of small millets in comparison to its substitutes, and the repercussions thereof, were first presented as context. Thereafter, based on analysis of data from literature, survey, and stakeholder contributions, a cluster map for the Indian small millets value chain was designed, and its competitive state presented.
Industrial agriculture and its requirement for standardized approaches is driving the world towards a global food system, shrinking the role of farmers and shifting decision-making power. On the contrary, a holistic perspective towards a new food-system design could meet the needs of a larger share of stakeholders. Long-term experiments are crucial in this transition, being the hub of knowledge and the workshop of ‘participation in’ and ‘appropriation of’ the research in agriculture over a long term.
Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are a form of private governance sometimes used to manage the social and environmental impacts of supply chains. This work argue that there is a potential tension between input and output legitimacy in MSIs. Input legitimacy requires facilitating representation from a wide range of organizations with heterogeneous interests. This work, however, faces collective action problems that could lead to limited ambitions, lowering output legitimacy.
In this paper, is described the market and social forces which influence the emergence of social innovations through various processes. The authors then look into the evolutionary pathways for social innovations , to avoid inertia and spur initiatives to bridge the social gap in an inclusive manner through mobilization of youth in particular. The ecosystem for social open innovations provides scope for connecting corporations
The IFAD-NUS project, implemented over the course of a decade in two phases, represents the first UN-supported global effort on neglected and underutilized species (NUS). This initiative, deployed and tested a holistic and innovative value chain framework using multi-stakeholder, participatory, inter-disciplinary, pro-poor gender- and nutrition-sensitive approaches.
Collaborative approaches are being promoted as inclusive forums for bringing state and non-state interests together to solve complex environmental problems. Networks have been recognized through previous research as important ways to involve stakeholders in such forums with members participating in knowledge creation and sharing as part of deliberative processes. Less well understood is the effectiveness of network creation and promotion by external actors, especially in relation to knowledge creation and sharing.
Multi-stakeholder participation (MSP) has become a central feature in several institutions and processes of global governance. Those who promote them trust that these arrangements can advance the deliberative quality of international institutions, and thereby improve the democratic quality, legitimacy and effectiveness of both the institutional landscape, as well as decisions made within it. This paper employs a heuristic framework to analyze the deliberative quality of MSP.